More Ticketmaster and Bruce Springsteen News

Following up on our story from yesterday, there is both good and bad news about Ticketmaster, although the bad far outweighs the good. The good news is that Bruce Springsteen himself has taken up the fight against Ticketmaster, as has the New Jersey state Attorney General. On his official site, Springsteen has posted a letter condemning Ticketmaster for trying to gouge his fans by redirecting them to higher-priced tickets at TicketsNow when face-value tickets still remained. He has ordered Ticketmaster to cease and desist the practice. Meanwhile, the Attorney General has launched an investigation of Ticketmaster after receiving over 250 complaints. Additional complaints can be filed at njconsumeraffairs.gov. So maybe now there’s an actual chance that Ticketmaster won’t do this again, which is definitely good.

But now on to the bad news. According to news reports, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are discussing a merger. The move comes after Live Nation broke free of Ticketmaster last year and began to offer an alternative to consumers. Naturally, Ticketmaster is now attempting to bring them back in the fold and return to total control of all ticketing in this country. The companies have yet to agree to specifics of the merger, so there is still hope.

A merger like this would be a complete disaster, both for fans and for artists. According to the above linked article, the ticketing services currently make a 25 percent profit on all of the tickets they sell, which would surely raise to an even more exorbitant level were there only one seller in place of any sort of competition. The monopoly would also give Ticketmaster the ability to demand greater concessions from artists before agreeing to sell tickets for the show. Buyers would have to pay higher prices for their tickets and less of those prices would be to pay the artists themselves. I hate Ticketmaster with a passion, as should everyone who actually likes music.